The Problem with Healer Feedback, and requested changes

[Shurrikhan]

turn it into a support role based around Haste/Brave/Faith/Shell/Protect/Regen.

Unless there are highly knowledge- and awareness-rewarding optimizations from those buffs that make them deliberate and nuanced actions, I'd rather such support tools stay on CDs.

The last thing I want is to be obliged to maintain Haste just because, while already annoying for its recipient, losing Haste for even a moment would be comparatively crippling, or for a random boss special or a untelegraphed raidwide (both things I want to see made more intensely and frequently) to potentially OHKO if Shell/Protect falls off for even a moment.

[Semirhage]

Unless there are highly knowledge- and awareness-rewarding optimizations from those buffs that make them deliberate and nuanced actions, I'd rather such support tools stay on CDs.

The last thing I want is to be obliged to maintain Haste just because, while already annoying for its recipient, losing Haste for even a moment would be comparatively crippling, or for survival on a random boss special or a untelegraphed raidwide (both things I want to see made more intensely and frequently) to potentially OHKO if Shell/Protect falls off.

Seconded. Ragnarok was the only other MMO where I dropped healing. Spamming GCD buffs in between spamming Cures isn't engaging. It's like having a rigid DPS rotation except worse, because your spells sparkle with no other impactful-feeling feedback. Haste! Bravery! Protect! Shell! Cure Cure Cure! Repeat! becomes pretty brainless really quickly.

[Archwizard]

On the one hand, I can understand why healers have such simple damage rotations: in theory, you may have to interrupt any complex combos to heal the tank or party.

In practice though, this argument tries to have things both ways. At this point in the game, all healers have so many oGCD tools (versus relatively limited healing requirements) that you rarely have to use any GCD heals outside of downtime, so your rotation is largely DoT, filler, and up to 2 cooldowns, with the place of any actual healing taken by oGCDs.
It's even to the point where the WHM experiment of "emphasize GCD heals with the Afflatus series" fell apart this expansion, and was hardly of value due to the strict timing requirements that GCDs impose. Hell, they even released SGE with this type of design in mind!

That said, with 4 different healers who follow 4 different philosophies, there is no "one size fits all" solution to healing -- or rather, in spite of the homogeneity of their attack rotations, we should avoid such a solution.

For instance, look at Astrologian, arguably the busiest healer thanks to its cards/seals. If we create a system where AST has a more complex rotation, even just adding 1-2 more buttons into the existing mix, we have to weigh that against its already high APM versus other healers, and consider whether the cards should be treated as an existing complication to AST's damage rotation by the same standards as any theoretical evolution to other healers'.
And obviously, regardless of which direction it takes, we can't account for the cards as having their own equivalent when weighing it against WHM or SGE.
Basically, "Is AST already engaging enough to the level we want out of all healers? Would we just be adding more for the sake of adding more?"

I think the most difficult of the healers to balance would have to be WHM however, despite its seeming simplicity.
If the devs truly wanted to make a healer whose powers focus on GCD healing to inform its limited damage arsenal, that solution is quite simple: all you need to do is trim down its direct healing oGCDs and emphasize effects like Plenary Indulgence that enhance GCD heals instead (for instance, transfer Synastry over since it's a waste on AST anyway). The issue however is balancing all of that lost damage uptime -- the intention of Afflatus Misery -- without creating a solution where you're tossing meaningless overheals during downtime just to charge up some mini-LB as now. You can't really say "just give it more damage oGCDs so it loses less to GCD heals" because then you run into players who will continuously attack to the detriment of WHM's healing role while still reaping the oGCD attacks.

Oh, and the solution to SCH will probably require trimming a lot of its healing tools, not least because of how bloated it is. But also, consider how many tools it has for its faeries that are mutually exclusive, and how much potential was lost when Selene was turned into an Eos clone.

[ForsakenRoe]

Reduce the availability of oGCD's and weaken the power of GCD heals. Increase the rate and potency of Raid-Wide damage from bosses. Make players use their full healing kit regularly.

Remove the focused healing role completely and turn it into a support role based around Haste/Brave/Faith/Shell/Protect/Regen. Provide a full dps rotation to be used while buffs are ticking on players.

Neither option is going to be happy with the decision, but Yoshida put himself on the spot when he catered to Savage players and the spreadsheet playstyle.

I believe/hope we can look at Abyssos as evidence that 'add more to heal', 'reduce access to healing OGCDs', 'force players to GCD heal more' and any adjacent 'solutions' along that path, are NOT the way to go. If they keep Abyssos level healing requirements, but reduce our access to OGCDs, it'll go from 'bloody hell this is annoying to keep up with' to potentially 'this is not even clearable'. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for an occasional 'throw out some GCD heals', I did my J-Waves and Curtain Calls, but there's problems with the idea. First, GCD healing has a BIG MP cost, it's not feasible to expect a WHM's MP bar to keep up when their AOE heals are so expensive, and lily healing only goes so far when they come back every 20s. MP management would be a nice thing to bring back, but not with how restrictive current MP costs are, and forcing players to 'lmao meld 900 more piety just to keep up with this new design' is not gonna go down well.

Second, more GCD healing means we don't have as much time to do damage, 'no shit thats the point' I hear you say, but I think it might lead to even higher damage variances, and therefore cause even more issues for enrage tuning. If you tune for a healer to be expected to do 4k damage over the 8min fight, as we have now, then reduce the amount they need to do to be 2k because they need to heal more, what happens when you have too much to heal, and they can only manage 1.5k because they have less tools for healing (WHM vs AST for example)? What if it turns out 'we had to keep more tools on the barrier healers than the pures, so they can still mit', and SCH SGE becomes the defacto pair because it's able to play like current, OGCD healing focused? What if players play better than dev testing teams expect (wouldn't be the first time), easily keep up with the new healing required and put out 3k instead of 2k, completely demolishing the enrage and having way less trouble than anticipated, leading to a very flat and disappointing raid?

Third, if we change how much time in a fight is spent healing vs DPSing, that might potentially mess with how older content works. Yeh I know EW stat squish did a number on most stuff, but it still needs to be a consideration for stuff. For example, you make more healing GCDs required in all Post-EW-Launch content. Now the DPS check in DSR might be unclearable. Can you do the eye phase DPS check, when your healers now have to spend a GCD extra per damage instance to keep up? If not, the fight also has to be retuned to the new design, meaning more dev time. It's like PLD getting retuned for the 2min meta, it wouldn't have needed that retuning if they didn't do the 2min design in the first place. That's a different topic though

I've been advocating for a 'add more complexity to DPS side' stance because it doesn't affect anything else. More rotational complexity during DPStime doesn't affect how hard it is to heal through Natural Alignment. It doesn't change how I'd tackle the Mit plan for Dominions. It can be balanced via potency tuning to be roughly equal to current damage output of healers. My WHM idea is about 80potency per minute higher than current. That same idea, while only refreshing Dia and spamming Glare (same as current, but Dia refreshing is more often in my idea) is 100 potency per minute less than current WHM. It's completely possible to tune the damage of the rotation to be such that playing 'glarespam' is enough to clear content, and doing the full bells-and-whistles rotation is just optimization for those dirty barsebrains/only a necessity for Savage and Ultimates. Or in my idea's case, it has alternative benefits, like charging a gauge to access a healing tool faster. You'd get there with just Glare and Dia, but throwing out that new Banish spell on CD would get you 5 gauge instead of the 1 from another Glare, and it's 40 potency stronger, might as well use it right?

Like right now, noone's gonna care if you're spamming Glare in a dungeon boss, and not using Dia at all, because it doesn't matter. Dia is just over two Glares of damage, so actually maintaining Dia is a mere 2 Glares a minute gained. When you look at it that way, you realise pretty quick: what you damage skills you press outside of Savage doesn't matter one jot. In anything without an enrage timer, 'what damage buttons you press' could even be 'literally nothing lmao', and you can still clear. I have never understood the players who say 'I dont want to have more damage skills to press for X Y or Z reasons' because those reasons can often be torn down like paper in the rain.

-'Hotbar space' condense GCD heals like Cure1 into Cure2, Medica1 into Medica2 etc.
-'But the new players' We're level 90, what new players? Keep the healing accessible sure, but adding more damage tools (that can be ignored if the precious 'new healer' can't keep up) isn't gonna kill the role
-'I like current healer design' Cool, good thing the balancing (if I had my way) means you could keep playing that design, at 98.5% of it's current effectiveness!

Haste! Bravery! Protect! Shell! Cure Cure Cure! Repeat! becomes pretty brainless really quickly.

Another reason why I think 'make us heal more often' is not the way to go: If we swap from pressing Glare a lot to pressing Cure a lot, isn't it the same problem? Of course someone's probably gonna say 'then why do you want more damage button if damage button is all just 'do damage' and to that I say 'context', yes a theoretical 15s CD Banish spell is just like Glare in that they do damage, but there's context around that button. In my idea, it builds gauge for a powerful heal tool at 500% the rate of Glare, so you can get the tool more often by using Banish on CD. It's timer is staggered from Dia, but may overlap in 'refresh timing' with Dia, leading to choices needing to be made of which to use first. Since losing a cast of Banish would be 40 potency, you could theoretically hold onto it to use for movement, if you so wished. Contrast this with WHM's healing tools, Solace is Cure2 and Rapture is Medica. But why would I ever want to use Medica or Cure2, when I have lilies that are damage neutral? Those GCDs become an absolutely 'I am out of everything else' last resort, which is fine as a safety net, but the point is, they're identical to the lily spells in function, there's no nuance to them. Maybe if there's super rough constant AOE healing to be done, it might be an idea to use one lily to get the timer charging, then MP healing, then swap back to lily healing, to keep both resources balanced and not overcapping, but we also have the Lilybell so...

Having a healer that is based on keeping up buffs on people would be good though IMO, just to satisfy the 'I don't want to do damage!' healers. They don't have to damage, they can just keep rotating Bravery and Faith on people for their rotation instead of Glare on the enemy. Or would 'buffing ally's damage' be too close to 'deals damage' too?

[Shurrikhan]

On the one hand, I can understand why healers have such simple damage rotations: in theory, you may have to interrupt any complex combos to heal the tank or party.

Sure, but... not all skills interrupt combos anyways. I don't want to see combos for healers --as the only complexity that adds is a bit of extra damage window restrictions (that ultimately remove further SpS tiers for particular raid buff durations), all in place of actual separate/separable abilities-- but they'd probably just flip the long-precedented switch and make it a non-issue anyways.

Nor would all combos need to path only into other offensive skills. Glare->Cure II, for instance, could also apply increased Defense, extended max HP, or... further sap Accuracy from enemies in an area around the heal's recipient, etc. Biolysis -> Adloquiem could cause enemies striking the target to be afflicted with a tick at a time of Bio (stacking up to the original duration), until the Adloquiem is consumed/expires. Etc., etc.

/Mostly agreed on all other points.

[Archwizard]

Sure, but... not all skills interrupt combos anyways. I don't want to see combos for healers

To be clear, I mean "combo" in the classical sense of "any combination of attacks or effects", not specifically combo actions as is common to melee, tanks, RDM, etc.

For instance, the order and pacing in which Black Mage performs its spells is quite particular, despite not being limited by combo actions, and any interruption to its rotation is... jarring... as a result of that careful timing. BLM not being alone in this by a long shot, of course, due to the number of time-management gauges or uninterruptible burst phases available to almost all DPS.
Basically, the simplicity of existing healer rotations is to prevent you from digging yourself so deep into your attack groove that you lose a significant amount of momentum while attacking.

Which to be clear, "not losing momentum by stopping to heal" is an ideal approach to healers, with the majority of the issue being taken towards their current simplicity to the point of homogeneity. Even something as simple as use of procs or more active/engaging DoT management would be able to tackle this without creating a burden of "sorry I couldn't do my job because it was a significant, personal DPS loss."

I suppose you could theoretically play around with, say, setting conditionals for certain healing effects that turn them into a personal DPS gain, however... things like spending Lilies when your target is below a certain health threshold for a bonus, for instance? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nor would all combos need to path only into other offensive skills. Glare->Cure II, for instance, could also apply increased Defense, extended max HP, or... further sap Accuracy from enemies in an area around the heal's recipient, etc. Biolysis -> Adloquiem could cause enemies striking the target to be afflicted with a tick at a time of Bio (stacking up to the original duration), until the Adloquiem is consumed/expires. Etc., etc.

Hell, for WHM and SGE you could play around with having Freecure proc from Holy/Glare or have a chance to force a Lily pop, or having Dosis/Dyskrasia proc to force your next healing GCD to crit.

Having a healer that is based on keeping up buffs on people would be good though IMO, just to satisfy the 'I don't want to do damage!' healers. They don't have to damage, they can just keep rotating Bravery and Faith on people for their rotation instead of Glare on the enemy. Or would 'buffing ally's damage' be too close to 'deals damage' too?

Isn't that... literally the point of AST?

[Archwizard]

Some spitball thoughts utilizing existing elements:

WHM:
* Lily system and Freecure reworked. Lily Gauge and Afflatus Solace become available at 35. Lilies are no longer timing based; instead, landing any non-Afflatus spell while in combat has a 15-20% chance to add a Lily to the gauge. (This effect does not stack when using area-effect spells.)
** Alternative: Lilies remain timing based while in combat, but casting any non-Afflatus spell advances the bloom timer by a few seconds.
* Regen introduced at level 32 as an upgrade to Cure 1; to compensate for the loss of Cure 1, casting Regen on a target that already has Regen active also causes an instant heal.
* Cure 3 is introduced as an upgrade to Medica 1, allowing you to center the cast around a target and increasing the healing potency on allies relative to their proximity to the target (400p within 15y, up to 600p within 5y). MP Cost of Cure 3 reduced to compensate for the loss of Medica 1. Afflatus Rapture is now a Lily-clone of the new Cure 3.
* An upgrade to Afflatus Solace that grants a chance to advance the Blood Lily by an additional rank relative to the target's lost health.
* After that you just need something simple to make the rotation an ounce more engaging. I recommend the addition of a new spell as an additional single-target complication (partly because WHM has the room, partly because WHM doesn't really many options in the kit to play with); for instance, ticks of Aero/Dia build up charges of Water/Banish, and casting Water/Banish consumes all accumulated charges at once for increased potency.

SCH:
* Selene once again has a separate function from Eos.
** Selene will instead attack your target with Whispering Wind, while granting a boost to your healing potency. Her Fey Union instead applies a Spikes effect to the target.
** While Eos is active, your spellcasting speed is increased as well.
** Summoning either one replaces their summon spell with "Metamorphosis", an ability that swaps to the opposite fairy immediately.
* Aetherflow and Energy Drain reworked: Energy Drain is now a 60 sec CD that restores all charges of Aetherflow. Energy Drain's potency increases for each Aetherflow remaining when activated, in addition to increasing Faerie Gauge.
* Dissipation removed; Energy Drain gains a second charge at level 60 instead, and Seraph grants 20% increased healing potency to the SCH while active.
* Ruin II removed; to compensate, Bio now deals instant damage if the target already has Bio active.
* Physick increases in potency if the target has a barrier active. Any barrier.
* Adloquium always crits when used outside of combat.
* Recitation also makes Adloquium and Succor instant cast.
* Deployment Tactics reworked. Now introduced at 35, Deployment Tactics is a toggled stance that swaps all of your spells from single-target to area-effect equivalents: Adloquium becomes Succor, Ruin/Broil becomes Art of War, Physick becomes Remedy, and Bio becomes Miasma.
** Remedy functions similarly to SGE's Prognosis, and also increases in potency on targets with a barrier active.
** Miasma has a 1.5s cast-time and applies a DoT to all enemies near the target, but cannot be stacked with Bio effects.

The ideal with SCH here is that instead of making the attack rotation any more complex in itself, the relationship you have with all of your tools becomes more involved, with methodical swaps to different stances based on what stratagem you're pursuing. For dungeon pulls for instance, you'll probably toggle DT often to swap between AoE attacks and single-target heals for W2W, but the exact inverse for bosses and raids. You may want to tag one of the faeries in to make use of their auras to enhance your spells, or double-down with them to focus fire for a burst phase. Options!

SGE:
* Same thing with Diagnosis/Prognosis: Potency increases on targets with a barrier active, and Eukrasian Diagnosis always crits when used outside of combat.
* Soterion also causes any healing spells cast by the SGE to heal Kardion's target for 290 potency.
* Phlegma grants additional healing to your Kardion target based on the number of targets struck, but only the initial target's healing is affected by Soterion.
* Dosis/Dyskrasia casts have a chance to make your next healing spell (GCD, not Kardion) critical.
* Rhizomata also generates an Addersting.

AST:
There is nothing I can offer to this job except for saying "top-down rework of the card system" and "remove Synastry".
Like, I would LOVE to see some Time Magic stuff for the job -- Combust ticks have a chance to proc Stella/Comet, Malefic casts accelerate Combust, play around with tick acceleration and duration extension and "potency increases based on remaining duration" effects on its heals, turn tankbusters into DoTs to stagger the damage, give AST fully a "turn back time" effect to restore an ally -- but without seriously adjusting how busy the job is as it is now, adding any type of complexity like that would make the job virtually unplayable.

[IDontPetLalas]

To be clear, I mean "combo" in the classical sense of "any combination of attacks or effects", not specifically combo actions as is common to melee, tanks, RDM, etc.

For instance, the order and pacing in which Black Mage performs its spells is quite particular, despite not being limited by combo actions, and any interruption to its rotation is... jarring... as a result of that careful timing. BLM not being alone in this by a long shot, of course, due to the number of time-management gauges or uninterruptible burst phases available to almost all DPS.
Basically, the simplicity of existing healer rotations is to prevent you from digging yourself so deep into your attack groove that you lose a significant amount of momentum while attacking.

Which to be clear, "not losing momentum by stopping to heal" is an ideal approach to healers, with the majority of the issue being taken towards their current simplicity to the point of homogeneity. Even something as simple as use of procs or more active/engaging DoT management would be able to tackle this without creating a burden of "sorry I couldn't do my job because it was a significant, personal DPS loss."

I suppose you could theoretically play around with, say, setting conditionals for certain healing effects that turn them into a personal DPS gain, however... things like spending Lilies when your target is below a certain health threshold for a bonus, for instance? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



Hell, for WHM and SGE you could play around with having Freecure proc from Holy/Glare or have a chance to force a Lily pop, or having Dosis/Dyskrasia proc to force your next healing GCD to crit.



Isn't that... literally the point of AST?

No, it isn't. Where is being a buffbot mentioned in the AST job description? AST is interesting (or used to be more interesting) because it allowed for healing, buffing and doing damage- not for being someone's pocket buffer. Even in another game , where that job's primary task was buffing - I was expected to heal and do damage, in varying degrees- or I was considered to be leeching. -

[Archwizard]

No, it isn't. Where is being a buffbot mentioned in the AST job description? AST is interesting (or used to be more interesting) because it allowed for healing, buffing and doing damage- not for being someone's pocket buffer. Even in another game , where that job's primary task was buffing - I was expected to heal and do damage, in varying degrees- or I was considered to be leeching. -

This really feels like a matter of splitting hairs, especially when referring to the post I was replying to that includes giving WHM an arsenal based on spreading Bravery and Faith. Which are basically "damage buff for DoW jobs" and "damage buff for DoM jobs", almost exactly like the existing AST cards (but with Phys Ranged flipped).

Part of the division of existing healers is that you have two who provide raid buffs weighed against their personal damage – cards, Divination, Chain Strategem – and two who instead (ostensibly) have higher personal damage output. White Mage falls into the latter category with AST as its counterpart in the former.

So on the one hand, within this existing division, not only would WHM have to be extensively reworked to become a buff mage but AST would probably need to be reworked as well to dip away from buffing (which to be fair, I wouldn't be against if it meant more offensive Time Magic like DoT manipulation), which is highly unlikely given that its cards are tied to its lore and the identity it has held since its inception as "the healer who buffs"; I know it's not literally in the job description, but that's its identity.
This would also have to account for the fact that healer damage contributions are exceedingly low while buffs are highly valued, to the point where buffing healers are already valued over damage dealers, so having one healer who exclusively buffs because it has no damage contribution of its own would be nigh impossible to balance against healers who deal damage, and likely be a requirement for most raids.

And on the other, you could have your cake and eat it too but only if you can justify overthrowing the existing paradigm to remove this division and reworking every healer to fit the new one, in a manner that satisfies why WHM would be more fitting as a choice for a buff mage than AST who already has (limited) systems in place akin to what you're asking for.
Which is also just begging for homogeny, since AST itself is a case study in how many different variations of damage buff will survive if given a choice between them in this game.

[ty_taurus]

SGE:
* Same thing with Diagnosis/Prognosis: Potency increases on targets with a barrier active, and Eukrasian Diagnosis always crits when used outside of combat.
* Soterion also causes any healing spells cast by the SGE to heal Kardion's target for 290 potency.
* Phlegma grants additional healing to your Kardion target based on the number of targets struck, but only the initial target's healing is affected by Soterion.
* Dosis/Dyskrasia casts have a chance to make your next healing spell (GCD, not Kardion) critical.
* Rhizomata also generates an Addersting.

Speaking on this SGE concept since it's the healer I care the most about, this solution resolves approximately 0 of SGE's issues. SGE does not have a difficult time healing. It doesn't need to a ton of additional healing buffs, it needs to have gameplay.

Rhizomata generating Addersting is also the suggestion I loathe that keeps getting brought up even though it destroys Rhizomata as a healing resource and condemns Toxikon to an eternal hell of being the shitty "gauge mechanic but it's really just Ruin II" that it's stuck in.